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MacPhilpin 1880, Google Books scan of Harvard copy

Internet Archive · 91 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This is an 1880 book, The Apparitions and Miracles at Knock, prepared and edited by John MacPhilpin of Tuam and published in Dublin by M. H. Gill and Son. The Internet Archive holds a Google scan of the Harvard College Library copy. It reprints Tuam News accounts and the official depositions of eye-witnesses to the apparition of 21 August 1879 on the sacristy gable of Knock Church, County Mayo. It argues that natural light could not have caused the apparition and lists cures recorded in Archdeacon Cavanagh's diary.

  • p. 14 …WHAT THE EYE-WITNESSES SAY—Testimonies of Patrick Hill, Mary M'Loughlin, Mary Beirne, Patrick Walsh…
  • p. 20 …In Gaelic, the name "Knock" signifies a hill. The village is surrounded by elevated knolls, which…
  • p. 21 …Looking, for instance, to the south-west, he beholds Cnoc-ban, or fair hill; and to…
  • p. 22 …A second Lourdes has arisen at Knock, a small village surrounded by little hills, from which…
  • p. 34 …but ancient-looking, buildings erected on the hill. He naturally asks: What is that? The site…
  • p. 41 …balls of the figures, which, as Patrick Hill testifies, appeared to him to be those of…
  • p. 44 …rightly due to the evidence of Patrick Hill, of Claremorris, a young, frank, intelligent boy, of…
  • p. 45 …Master Hill declares that they appeared to him to move, and, as it were, on wing…
  • p. 46 …I am Patrick Hill; I live in Claremorris; my aunt lives at Knock; I remember the…
  • p. 49 …myself; I went away then. (Signed) PATRICK HILL. Witness present—U. J. Canon Bourke. October 8th…
  • p. 51 …NOTE.—Mary M'Loughlin had gone away before Patrick Hill came. Their testimony relates to two…
  • p. 61 …The fifteenth witness is John Durkan, one of the three who accompanied young Hill. His testimony…
  • p. 65 …looked around the church and school, and hill and vale, mound and mearing, and saw no…
  • p. 70 …This was a boy of about fourteen years of age, named Patrick Hill—a bright, intelligent…
  • p. 71 this story in the manner already described, Hill departed, and presently a lad was brought in…

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

can life and manners in that great republic to the west of the Atlantic. In this way our Catholic people are not at all put about by the narration of miracles or of miraculous apparitions at Knock. They are, by faith, aware beforehand that such things happened before, happen now, and will take place as long as the Church of God is on earth. The angels appeared to Abraham, and walked with him, and talked to him, and directed "him in all his ways." They appeared and spoke to, and brought to a foreign country and back, the grandson of Abraham, Isaac, the father of all the Israelites. The same is true of Tobias and Daniel, the prophets; and of St. Peter, the head of the Apostles, and of numerous saints in the Catholic Church in Africa, in Rome, and in this island during the golden age of sanctity in Ireland. What happened once, why not happen again? It is the same God who ruled and governed mankind then as now; it is the same Church that points out to her children the way to heaven; the Irish faithful, like those in the time of St. Columkille, or at a later period, are the brothers of the Redeemer, purchased by his sacred Blood. He loves us as He loved them, and sends his angels to take charge of us, as they took charge of them in days past. These points have been spoken of and canvassed in conversation amongst laity and amongst religious for the past six months. It was only when the matter was described in a former issue of the Tuam News that the faithful began to attach any degree of credibility to the facts before that time incorrectly narrated. The Tuam News gave a summary of the events that had occurred up to that time, stamped with the appearance of the supernatural. The Apparition of the 21st of August last cannot well be understood without having some notion of the position and form of the little Catholic church in the village of Knock.

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Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 91 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.